Thank you, /., for sending AT LEAST an hour's worth of work to /dev/null due to your assinine, wretched JavaScript. I may or may not write in this journal about that (and what I was originally writing about); I haven't decided yet if I should bother.

(Or, why Web 2.0 and beyond is a frakking mess)

Life was simple. We clicked on links, or in the case of Lynx and eLinks, we hit the ENTER key. The forward button took us forward, whilst the back button generally took us back (unless, of course, that would POST, and it was usually a Good Thing to prevent a user from automatically POSTing again, considering the semantics docuemented for it).

Then some were a little dissatisfied. They thought browsers needed a little more oomph, and generally, they were right. JavaScript and DHTML were pretty good ideas in their infancy. There were big wins all around. JavaScript for example can validate fields on a form, and not even bother the server unless all form elements meet the intended criteria. It definitely saves a round trip, in that the server doesn't have to interpret the query string or the POST, find it's wrong, and prompt the user again for the missing or incorrect information. DHTML can provide a tabbed-looking interface, using the visibility attributes to make sections of the page appear or disappear (I really like that about the Sipura SPA2000 for example).

Mind you, the Web already had some other problems, such as font size specifications. A lot of sites sprang up that for no other reasons than piss-poor design looked terrible to the point of being illegible. I'm speaking of course of everything being laid out in "px" when really the Web weenie designer doesn't know whether 1px represents 0.2mm or 1mm on my display. So of course those designers that insist on laying out everything to the pixel don't realize the text they've just laid out is only legible by a housefly or a flea.

So what do I have to do? Why, at first, that's fairly simple. My favorite, Firefox, has a setting not to allow text under a certain size, so it in effect clamps the px value to (in my case) 14. Of course, those Web weenies rain on even this parade by specifying line height by px instead of as a percent or relative size (small, large, xlarge, etc.). So then their text gets all squashed on itself. (Take note here that I don't quite know whether to blame the Gecko layout/rendering engine or said Web weenie, but I'm leaning towards the latter.)

This is also not to mention lots of stupidities, like specfying a text color with a background color (or worse, image) with too low a contrast. Or choosing a text color and assuming noone *EVER* changes their default background color from the blinding white. So of course they wonder why they're not seeing the problem in their own browser when I tell them their text is difficult to read because it doesn't contrast enough with the background. But I digress; this merely shows that Web 2.0 wasn't necessary for several HTML abuses. Let us return to the abuse of dynamic content.

It wasn't long before certain designers caught a glimpse of the capabilities of this newfangled JavaScript and DHTML when....you guessed it...they started abusing the crap out of it.

First came menus. Now mind you, actually menus can be an extremely Good Thing(tm), even in a Web application. But what in essence has happened is: 15 or so years of UI design and experience got totally reinvented, and not in any improved way. It's been my 20+ years graphic experience (starting with the Amiga 1000 in the mid 1980's) that Web applications are the SOLE uses of menus that will activate just by the act of going over them!! At the OS and WM levels, menus don't do squat, except for maybe highlight the title, UNTIL YOU CLICK ON THEM!!!!!! This is good; content is not obscured until the deliberate action of actually depressing a mouse button happens. Until then, EVERYTHING REMAINS VISIBLE! This is something that seems to have been utterly lost by the latest wave of Web misdesigners. This is also not to mention their menus will look utterly terrible if again they adhere to this principle of specifying every last God forsaken thing in px instead of relative dimensions. And dammit, when I click somewhere else, OTHER THAN the menu, I >>EXPECT<< the menu will go away.

But it doesn't stop there. That wasn't good enough. Then misdesigners wanted their little doodads to slide across the page. Then they wanted to make most of the page shaded while some other area was bright. And again, they decided to lay this all out in px...not percent of the window, not relatively...all in px. Why the frak not? After all, everybody has the exact same video controller set to the exact same parameters driving the exact same monitor, right? Right?? What? Why...why the heck not?

It's really simple. There are differing pieces of hardware to meet differing needs. There just is no practical way to lug around the video real estate I have at home, a 21" monitor, in a laptop. I run that puppy in 1600x1200. If I were to attempt that on the average laptop, virtually everything would be illegible. So making a design assuming 800x600, or even 1024x768, is just plain impractical and stupid.

Please, folks...don't waste my time with your cutesy bouncing windows or sliding pop out forms. Just put the God-blessed stuff on the page (or change its visibility), and BE DONE WITH IT. If you're going to have some sort of ancillary form to fill out, DON'T tantalize me with content that's darkened and put your snot on top of it; make it a @#$$% other page. And when I click somewhere OTHER THAN your blasted window, get your Godforsaken trash out of my marmlefrakling way!! Don't put some "close" button or "X" on it; get it out of the way, and don't try to be my window manager! I've selected one myself (Metacity), and I don't need you to select your own concoction for me.

Don't EVEN get me started on how Flash has ruined pages with its cutesy animation that makes me wait to get my navigating done. I left one domain registrar in the dust because of it. They decided their basic page wasn't good enough, that their menu titles had to float in from all over and assemble themselves on each page visit. All cutesy is is attractiveness for the first 5 or so times I see it, then it becomes an UTTER waste of my time.
And while we're at it, enough with the windows already!!! I am a perfectly functioning adult that does NOT need you to manage my windows for me!! Again, I chose Metacity for this task; I DON'T want you to reinvent this. I am absolutely perfectly capable of right clicking on a link you have provided and deciding whether I wanted that link to appear in the same window, a different window (open link in new window), or a new tab in the same window (open link in new tab). GODDAMMIT, DON'T TRY TO THINK FOR ME!

Alas, I used to like SourceForge...a LOT. Extremely unforunately, they have succumbed to several forms of Web 2.0-itis. No longer is there a simple, uncluttered way to navigate; the content gets obscured by the mere fact of accidentally wandering over their menus. It's as utterly simple as using onclick instead of onmouseover or onhover, but lamentably, it seems they've not put any forethought into this. They just blindly went with the rest of the trashy design of most of the rest of the Web.

And perhaps even more lamentable, this very site has also been charmed with bright/dark windows and other annoying such crap. Hell, to make this blog post without a crapload of distractions that is this Web 2.0, I had to disable JavaScript.

One even more insidious thing I've been seeing lately is a crappy FEEDBACK widget with a rotating + and - between brackets. Every few seconds it has to change from a + to a -, and every time I scroll the page up and down, it skitters all over the place along the right side of the page. This is YET ANOTHER reason I reach for PrefBar's JavaScript tickbox to untick it. I first saw it on Avaya's support site, and it's been infecting more and more sites on a monthly basis. It's just annoying and distracting. I'd MUCH rather see you clearly put a feedback link at the top and bottom of the page, or make it part of the usual "contact us".

Actually, this whole sour experience started today (well, intensified from what it already was) when I went to schedule a payment for my Discover bill. I remember receiving advanced notice that their Web site would not be available at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a date for whatever length of time because they would be updating and ....AHEM!!..."improving" it. It was quite good as it was, but I thought, hey, whatever they want to do to (try to) snazz it up, let 'em give it a try.

The very first thing I get blasted with after logging on was that "dim the main content" whilst putting up a "window" on top of it. It says something about updating my security settings, which I think, what the heck, I'll give this a whirl. Actually, it was pretty good...except for the fact it wasn't a real window, and I couldn't just click the main content to the top, because I was really interested in what balance I'd have to pay off. Once again, I have a window manager, and I don't want you ("you" as in Discover/Novus, or at least their Web designers) to be it. So...not really wanting to, I clicked their little "close" widget (I wasn't done with their security forms, 5 pages in all, and I would have far preferred just to put this window in the background for a bit while tending to other things.) Plus, I noticed once again they had fallen for the fallacy that everything could be laid out in px, because one of their submit buttons only partially showed. But again, do I blame them, or do I blame the Gecko programmers? It's a much easier argument to blast the Web designers for lack of thought...they COULD choose other ways to accomplish the same thing, but they don't. Presumably they're a crapload more worried about presentation than functionality, and that's a crying shame.

The one thing you should never do is lose functionality. To my amazement, I see something that looks like a log out button, but alas, there's nothing behind it. It's not a hyperlink, it's not an imagemap, it's nothing at all. The sole way I know of logging off the Discover Account Center site is to time out. That's just not at all good. I very much liked the fact that the log off button was moved to a much more easily located spot, in the upper left of the page (it was in varying spots on the right of the page, depending on the width of the currently opened window). But to stick it there with nothing actionable to back it up...inexcusable.

And while you're at it, how about some deeper regression testing? I wanted to write them about some of these deficiencies, so I look on the page. Near the bottom, it says "Contact Us" as usual. Yep, that's EXACTLY what I wanted to do. So I click on it. I didn't watch too closely; what this was was yet another instance of the abuse of JavaScript and window.open(), which of course I've told Firefox to open in a new tab, not a new window. I go looking through the list of links (there's dozens of them, ostensibly to thwart tens of thousands of emails a day asking the same things over and over), but of course somewhere near the end of this I see something to the effect of "send a secure message to Customer Service." Bingo, this is exactly it. But to my disappointment, it says I have to log in to do that. Huh...that's funny, I thought I already logged in. No matter, click the log in now to send a message -type link, and I log in again. I went and found the contact us link again, click it, found the "write to customer service" link again, and it asks me to log in (again) to do that. It's at this time I notice I have about 5 tabs in my window, the leftmost of which was my originally logged in page. Again, enough with the window.open()!!! If I really want to do that, I'll right-click and choose that menu option!

I'll just have to say this much though. Not everything Web 2.0 is a disaster. Look at Google Maps and Gmail for example. Every time I use them, they are unobtrusive, and do really cool things (like being able to drag maps and have missing pieces get downloaded, or anticipate possible completions based on what's typed already, and giving me a dropdown list of completions). While some of those features (completions based on current typing) violate some of those complaints above (obscuring content), it's actually quite minimal, and it leads me to believe they really worked at not making it as annoying as a lot of these other sites.

After all...Google are the juggernaut of search engines. Why? There's a few reasons: relevant results (most important...this would be PageRank), free to use, simple but powerful search terms (like site: and such), but most importantly in UI design, advertising w/o being obtrusive. They don't have banner ads, only sponsored links just under the search blank and along the right of the page. No flutter downs, no slide ins, no make-it-dark-til-you-click-here...just a few very short ads near the top and along the side, text only ...no Flash, no animated graphics. THIS is why they are the giants of the search engine world.

Take heed, Web 2.0 designers. The VERY EXISTENCE of the JavaScript tickbox in PrefBar, the very existence of NoScript, the very existence of Grease Monkey ought to give you pause, and tell you you're not doing a particularly good job. The very last thing you want to be doing is annoying your visitors, but it looks like the final result is that you are. Otherwise there wouldn't be much need for those three mentioned pieces of software, among others which I'm sure I'm not yet familiar.

C'mon, get serious now. Your annoying, distracting antics only reinforce one really simple concept: just because the speedometer WILL indicate up to 200 doesn't mean you should drive ANYWHERE NEAR 200, or at least not the majority of time. Yes, on occasion you want to hit 200 or so, beacuse just look at what designers like Google have done. But don't use a feature just because you can. A Web widget without serious function behind it is just fluff and a big waste of time, and sometimes purely a source of annoyance and frustration.

Having just read a Wikipedia article on CMS that described 3270 terminals, I had to smirk a bit because for years there was that big difference in terminals, between character-oriented and screen-oriented. Color me sort of amused that we've gone back and forth now a couple of times. We had the 3270 screen-oriented way, then character-oriented (not sure which was first, actually...the first I encountered was the character oriented CRT). Now when we do Web forms, we're more or less back to screen-oriented input. But now with things such as JavaScript and AJAX, we can go back to character-oriented interaction.

Reminiscent of Jimmy on "South Park" starting a joke, I feel like saying, "Have you heard about this?" Recently Ellen DeGeneres sobbingly opens her show with a plea to animal rescuers to hand back a dog to her hairdresser's family. OK, call me crazy, but how many of you actually read those terms of service, acceptable use policies, privacy policies to which one is supposed to agree as a condition of using a service/website/whatever? I do. Precisely twice I can remember in my adult life have I bypassed that and gone for it.

Truly, when it came time to roll over a 401(k) into a self-directed IRA (it was mandatory), I really probably should have read all the "fine print" before signing the contract with this one investment firm. I should have not because anything onerous has happened, but because this was substantial money I was putting in the care of someone else. The reason I didn't do so is this investment house was recommended by a very dear friend of mine, and I assumed he read this contract and found nothing wrong with it. But it is what it is now; for better or worse, I have put my signature to a document that, for all I know, could say that two days from now, I forfeit everything I gave them with no recourse. I highly doubt it says something that ridiculous, but it very well could because I never read it.

Another time I did this was recently when I had to fly to attend computer training for my job. I got damn sick and tired of selecting this and that about my flight on the United Airlines site. I knew if I would just register with their site and get a United Miles number, I could have easy access to the information I wanted without having to click through 3 or 4 questions. But when it came to the little checkbox on the Web form that says something like "I have read, understood, and agree to the agreements/policies/etc. for this site," I held my nose, checked the checkbox, and clicked on the submit button. For all I know, they could have something in there that demands I forfeit my computer and all its peripherals to them, or I must travel 5 times within a year or be subject to a million dollar lawsuit, or <insert ridiculous demand here>.

In both my cases, I made the broad assumption that none of these large, large companies would put ridiculous or stupid stuff in these agreements because if they did, they'd shortly be out of business because customers would flock in droves to other firms once someone like me read these docs and started to caution the public about just what they say (especially in this Internet and blogging age, let alone the longstanding tradition of going to any and all of my local investigative reporters in whatever media).

Some of the agreements I've slogged through are real peaches too. Take the ToS and AUP of your typical ISP, and in particular the one for Verizon DSL. They are so laden with phrases like "including but not limited to" and "at our sole discretion." What it's basically telling everyone is kiss our ring (or worse), bend over, and thank us hourly for "servicing" you, or we'll rip your service out so fast the cable will slice your nose off as we're retracting it to our wirecenter, and there's not a damn thing you can really do about it either, because you agreed to this. It's the classic Lily Tomlin as the operator, saying we're the phone company. Life becomes really difficult (at least compared with everyone else who holds their nose, kisses their ring, and cowers in fear) when they have one over a barrel like that. They can point to anything they want, or really nothing at all, and cut me off because they can point to the phrases "but not limited to" or "at our sole discretion."

Well, I've digressed a bit. Here's the bigger takeaway point:

If Ellen would have just not handwaved her dog agreement, there would be a lot less grief for her, a lot less grief for her hairdresser, and a lot less grief for the hairdresser's young family.

If press accounts are to be believed, it clearly states there is no gifting of the animal(s) to third parties. What part of that is not so clear? Did Ellen believe the hairdresser was also a worker for the animal shelter? Somehow, I really, really doubt that. It's exceedingly simple: if you're told you don't give the animal to anyone but the shelter people, you don't give the animal to anyone but the shelter people! How hard is that to grasp? Well, it's really hard to grasp when you just handwave the contract.

I also hate to say it, but the EULA for some of Microsoft's latest works is far worse. Many other sites and blogs say far more than I could in this comparatively tiny space, but suffice it to say they say basically you're a criminal, and you probably can't access your precious data (at least that which is stored/retreived/managed through Microsoft's software, including Office and the OS itself), unless you can nearly continuously prove you're NOT a criminal (think activation and WGA). They also make it illegal in most versions of Vista to run it virtualized. So...let's see...you're going to demand I buy a separate system just for your stinkin' OS instead of running it under a virtual computer along with several other environments (which are virtualized). No, I don't suppose you're going to compensate me either for the time and effort it'll take to restore a Vista system to an exact previous state, not to mention paying for a copy of True Image or Ghost to do so (a revert to a previous virtual machine state is darn close to instantaneous).

An overshadowing point of this is, with few exceptions, we all do some things on occasion that we know to the letter of the agreemnent are wrong, but we do them anyway. Verizon are stupid to make their customers agree to some of their terms (so YOU, Verizon, say this posting I wrote is defamatory, but others, including me, don't see it that way). As long as I'm not using any more copies of Office, XP, Vista or whatever, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to run your software under QEmu, VMWare, or KVM (and with no fear of losing all my hard work). Ellen's hairdresser and her (his?) daughters are probably just fine people.

Bottom line though...unless you're masochistic and you really WANT to have your life have more angst, you really can't just handwave those agreements.

Color me less than amused by Web sites in general these days. Apparently, most have never heard of the KISS principle.

The Web started off as a wonderous place to share information. When one was writing about a topic of any sort, one could insert links for further reading, corroboration, or simply to move on to the next piece of related information. Then it grew up a little by allowing dynamically generated content by allowing form submission. Boy howdy, that really spurred on the Internet by having orders taken, giving birth to a whole new segment of our modern economy. Then it grew up a little more by allowing the clients to be software inside software, such as Java and JavaScript. That reduced the load on the poor lil ole servers by allowing validation of form content before submission and allowing the appearance to be changed, all without having to send information to and from the Web server. Macromedia further enhanced the Web by making a system for drastically reducing the bandwidth required for video and other media-rich content.

But then again, this was not without its cost. Sure as a bat can be used to play baseball, it can also surely be used to subdue people and break property. So it is the same with all these wonderful Web features.

Let's just start with what to me was the first offender, Flash. Web sites or their designers were no longer content with hyperlinking; they now "needed" elaborate moving pictures of Flash presentations even to move around from page to page (and I definitely use the term "need" VERY loosely). Gee, it looks like those numbskulls totally forgot a few things, chief among them that I would often like to keep my place in my Web experience by opening a link in a new window (and later as clients improved, in a new tab). And this is from the perspective of someone who sees and hears OK (not perfectly); it seems to me this is a big, big snub at those who are visually impaired. Apparently to the modern Web, noone but the Web designer matters, for all you v.i. people and those (like me) who want to surf in a different way (new windows, tabs, etc.) are just plain out of luck. This is not to mention the utter WASTE of time waiting for the images that show me where the buttons are actually appear, wipe in, fade up, or what have you. When a certain unremembered domain registrar felt they needed to switch from a simple link-based scheme to tedious, time-wasting Flash, I switched domain registrars. These Web wankers don't seem to understand people generally like their freedom: the freedom to get things done quickly, the freedom to visit a link in the same window, the same window but a different tab, or a new window, the freedom to have the text of links pronounced OR be visible...you name it. The Web began this tumble, and it was really only gentle at this point, but annoying nonetheless.

Next came the Web weenies (designers specifically) that decided to clamp their hands on each side of my head, put my wrists in chains, and take over my mouse by insisting that the page is going to be so many pixels wide, with type so many pixels high, with spacing of that type (line height) of so many pixles, and so on. The standards allow for user-configurable items for these things, like size="xlarge" or width="90%"...but no...the modern Web designer I guess would rather force me to take my mouse and expand or contract my browser window to conform to THEIR idea of what I should be doing! For shame that I would want my browser open to 500 pixels or so when you decided it needs to be 750. It's blasphemy on the designer! I also guess they think they know what's best in terms of video cards and monitors...why, everybody has a 19" monitor set to 1024x768, don't they? Noone ever sets their screen to 1600x1200 in a vain attempt to get more on the screen at once, and thus your 10px text is legible only to fleas. Apparently, it was worth pissing me off to try to get their message across EXACTLY as they thought it should be.

Next came the wankers who similarly thought I wasn't intelligent enough to know what to do with my right mouse button and the different menu that will pop up should I click it. They incessantly are taking away my freedom, my choice, indeed sucking the joy right out of surfing the Web by insisting on using window.open() among other functions. Again...I am perfectly capable of deciding whether I wanted to follow your hyperlink in the same window, another tab, or a new window!!!!!! I didn't need you to make a navigational mess of it by using that funtion/method! This is compounded by some Web weenies creating links referring to the same page, such as "example.com/#" because if one DOES use the new window or tab functionality, one is just greeted by the same page; no navigation has taken place, only a waste of time takes place. I'm a little surprised the designers don't come around trying to place devices under my eyelids to keep them open. If my eyes did close, I wouldn't be able to see their "magnificence." Sadly, the Web's downfall was accelerating.

Have you, gentle reader, ever stopped to ponder that practically the only venue where menus pop up without being clicked is within a Web browser? Just about any other software ever written does not automatically start spewing itself onto the screen in the form of pulldown menus UNTIL that ever-important mouse click. Yet Web designers think absolutely nothing of obscuring content, nay, even obscuring other hyperlinks, by having menus appear for just hovering around their top element. Have you NEVER placed your mouse somewhere above your browser for some reason, then moved your mouse to click on a link somewhere near the top of the page, only to be thwarted by a basically clueless Web designer because that link is now underneath this basically unsolicited menu???? These days, I'm mousing aroung my screen on eggshells, because if I wiggle out of line at the wrong time, all the sudden I can't even navigate on the page because a popup menu has now come up RIGHT on top of what I WOULD have clicked. The Web was rolling downhill to beat the band by now.

What's even worse on this last point is that I USED TO be able to click in trusty ole PrefBar to turn off JavaScript and thus most of these annoying effects. It's not so easy anymore. Now apparently there is markup which will do this which doesn't even rely on JavaScript to update the page dynamically. Sadly, even one of my most beloved sites, SourceForge, has given into this convoluted menuing system, thus making me ashamed (YES, ASHAMED) to have an OSS project up there. Boy, the Web was starting to attempt speed records for going downhill by now.

Shall we for a moment contemplate combinations of what's been mentioned so far? By and large, the links in these menus cannot be opened in a new tab or window, they will only navigate to the next page in the same window. Now that you've decided my menu items are going to be 10px high or whatever, did it ever occur to you that as a countermeasure I told Firefox not to render text any smaller than 16px, as a floor (specs under 16 get size 16)? Gee...now all your carefully "px laid out" menus and such are close to both illegible and unusable. The Web was actively requisitioning JATOs to get down the hill even faster.

What's worse, as with a lot of software, there seems to be a leapfrogging effect. At first, Web designers and site operators were sane, considerate people. Then they decided to make use of JavaScript to create the popup and popunder. Browser programmers countered with popup/under blockers, or by the users countering by turning off JavaScript. But then Web weenies decided to make it impossible to navigate their site without new windows, JavaScript and such. Browser designers then made options at least to keep this under a little bit of control by forcing calls to window.open() to do as advertised, to use a new tab, or to use the very same window. Other Web wankers then decided to start using the target attribute of anchors to create new windows. I've yet to see a countermeasure for this. For every browser feature, some group of designers have abused them, and have even made their sites virtually inaccessible without using these misfeatures.

The whole point is that this is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO unnecessary!!!! For the most part, more judicious use of the features will net the same effect and be FAR less annoying. Simply using onclick instead of onmouseover makes menus sane again. Making hyperlinks real hyperlinks instead of just "#", optionally with an "onclick="window.open(...)"" if you're that inclined to open a new window for me, solves the problem of clicking on that link in such a way as to open a new tab or window (where it actually does something useful instead of just redisplaying the page in said new tab or window). Simply using relative amounts like 15% of the width or height instead of a specific number of pixels doesn't distort menu items or cause the GRE to start writing text on top of other text (thus making a visual mess of the page).

People, people, people...turn yourselves from Web weenies and wankers to extraordinarily useful artists and technicians by considering more than your highly controlled pixellated world......PLEASE!!!!!! Do your part to clean up the cesspool of the modern Web...I BEG YOU!!! PLEASE!!!!!!! I can't possibly be the only one driven slowly insane (and quickly frustrated).

Hmmm...so, it appears any Slashdotter can begin blogging here. The management doesn't care one way or another what we post here. That's great.

Color me amused at the Wikipedia entry for NASCAR rules, stating several of them that are a bit hard to believe simply because these features are or are not commonly on stock cars. For example, it says fuel injection is not allowed, only carbeuration (sp?), no overhead cams, and no turbo or super chargers. Hmmm....

A small test: I wonder what http://www.philippsfamily.org./Joe/ the URL tag will do...(what the heck is auto-linking? Does this take a close tag?)

And finally...one small test...

what does putting something inside ecode tags do?

Not bad...I like the presentation. Now...